I want to talk a little about Zeeke here. He doesn’t get a lot of the limelight in my eyes, since I’m all about Zoe (but trust me, he’s the love of Den’s life!). But he has some very funny personality quirks.

Mornings are always amusing. He’s a very grumpy boy in the morning. Over the past year he got used to Den’s early morning schedule, and he knows he doesn’t get to go out until right before Den leaves. So he doesn’t bother getting up until Den is done with his shower, and then he only moves to his dog bed in the office and falls back asleep. The problem with this now is that Zoe wakes up in the morning full of energy and wants to play. Now generally, after attacking Den and me in bed, she’ll just grab a toy and chew on it. However she does it while laying right up against Zeeke on the dog bed. So the whole time she’s happily chewing and leaning back against him (she uses him as a pillow sometimes), and he’s laying there moaning and grumping at her. He doesn’t often do anything about it, just moans and bitches. Mrrrrrrr. Grumph. Grummmm mrrrrrrr. And so on.

I love the fact that Zoe never gets perturbed by this. She very happily ignores him until he gets fed up and smacks her. And then she snaps back, and goes back to chewing her bone. It’s a very neat interplay between the two dogs - I find it completely fascinating. Den mentioned today how Zoe goes from cute to vicious, to cute to vicious. When she’s playing with Zeeke (or peeved at him and getting snarky) she snarls and just looks mean. Two seconds later they both stop and pant a little and she has a big happy smile on her face. Then blink your eyes and it’s back to attacking each other again.

Den had a problem with the front door today after taking Zeeke out - it wouldn’t close because of snow stuck in the doorframe. He had to chisel/scrape the snow out, and then the storm door wouldn’t close. The whole time both doors are wide open. Both dogs just stood in the living room and watched. I was right there beside Zeeke, but he didn’t even twitch towards that door. I’m very proud of him. Zoe too, but he had such problems with door bolting last year. It’s really great to see him behaving so well.